After 80 years outfitting southwest Oklahoma City’s blue-collar workforce, Sam’s Best Buys is closing its doors for good. Owner Harvey Goldstein, who runs the store his parents founded, plans to retire and sell off the remaining inventory by December, ending an era for a shop that has clothed generations of ranch hands, oilfield workers, and industrial laborers along South Agnew Avenue.
Goldstein’s parents, Sam and Pauline Goldstein, established the business in 1945 as KOCO first reported. The store sits at 2409 S. Agnew Ave. in southwest Oklahoma City, just north of the historic Stockyards City neighborhood, according to the Better Business Bureau Serving Central Oklahoma. Business records show the shop was first registered in October 1978 and long listed officially as Sam’s Army Surplus Store before it expanded into general workwear and department goods, per the same BBB filing.
Pauline Goldstein, known to customers as Mrs. Sam, graduated from the Blackwood School of Business in 1937 before co-opening the surplus store with her husband in 1945, according to her 2007 obituary published by The Oklahoman. She worked at the store for the rest of her life and was married to Sam Goldstein for 55 years until his death in May 1992, the obituary states.
A Blue-Collar Destination Near the Stockyards
Sam’s Best Buys made news back in 1989 as shoppers prepared for colder weather, and the store built its reputation over the decades as a fixture treating customers like neighbors. It became known for men’s big-and-tall apparel up to size 10XL, flame-resistant clothing, and heavy workwear from brands like Dickies, Walls, Key, and Round House, according to a December 2016 report in Oklahoma Farm & Ranch. That niche made it a go-to for the industrial and agricultural workers who have long worked the South Agnew corridor near the Oklahoma National Stockyards, a district established in 1910 around what the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber describes as the world’s largest stocker and feeder cattle market…